Trevor Noah and Ta-Nehisi Coates' Conversation About Race Is Important Television

Was it really only a few months ago that Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on the Daily Show? Things were so different then. Jon Stewart was the host. Coates was not officially labeled a genius. And, at that time, the Atlantic correspondent was on the road with his best-selling book, Between the World and Me. We were all younger.

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On Monday, Coates returned to the Daily Show to sit down with its new host, Trevor Noah. While the conversation didn't have the nuance and depth of the Stewart interview in July—Noah seemed intimidated and fawning around the writer—it was still essential viewing. The two dug into America's mass incarceration crisis, the subject of Coates' latest cover story for the Atlantic.

"America is a country that's founded on the notion of liberty and at this moment right now its the most prolific jail in the world," Coates told Noah. "Of African American males, 1 in 3 will spend time in jail among high school drop outs. We're talking about a massive threat to liberty."

"There's been a view of black people having a penchant for criminality," Coates said. "Slavery was justified because if black people weren't enslaved they'd be going around raping or robbing or pillaging ... This era of mass incarceration is new."

The theme of race continued throughout the show, with Daily Show Correspondent Roy Wood Jr. reporting from the Million Man March in Washington D.C. and discovering that the rally wasn't a celebration.